After the horrors of WW1 and WW2 architects in Britain made a valiant attempt to contribute their part to a reclamation of social normalcy. Such was the way Simon Thurley, the British government’s principal adviser on the historic environment in England, put it in his analysis of architecture and its design revolution in Britain from the 1950s through the 1970s. It was a revolution that turned its back on tradition and history and went instead for simplicity and functionality. –Ron Price with thanks to “Buildings That Reshaped Britain: The Modern Age,” ABC1 TV, 6:10-7:99 p.m. 4 September 2008.

As they tried to get back
to the day-to-day routine
of living; as they came to
enjoy more and more of
that post-war affluence--
the mass-produced cheap
and fast ticky-tacky houses
and apartment blocks; as
they started using electric
washers and convenience
foods--some of normalcy
returned with TV to happily
sedate, let people fall asleep
in front of the news after long
days...helping them cultivate
forgetfulness with their still
careworn and wrinkled faces,
with their aversion for serious
thinking and too much analysis,
with a convulsive craving to be
busy and to be ever-distracted.(1)

The mask of faith was drawn aside
and it showed a changing visage:
regretful, doubting, looking for a
type of rebirth that never came; as
sex was referred to coyly, if at all,
and the upper lip was stitched well
down over the teeth, lips pursed
while out popped a grin and a
toothpaste smile--as a new dark
heart of an age, our age, my age
of transition approached in the
womb of our travailing age which
would require yet another revolution
in architecture if another normalcy
was to return again to shattered lives.

(1) D.T. Miller and M. Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were, Doubleday and Co.Ltd., N.Y., 1977, p.156.